


I.O.U

by Devolucao



Category: Naruto
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Quite Gen, Pre-Canon, wounded warriors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 17:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devolucao/pseuds/Devolucao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which: Raidou takes up a new hobby, and Genma still refuses to call it a date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I.O.U

Part of Raidou's stubborn nature, Genma would say, was that he could not ever accept something as given. There were no favors in Raidou's world, but rather obligations, indebtedness, behest. Over money, over missions, and especially over food. He was proud of the fact that he always repaid his debts in full. An eye for an eye, neither a beggar nor a lender be. 

"Put away your money," Raidou would insist. "You got it last time. Fair's fair."

As always, there'd be a struggle for the check, or the phone, or who could get his wallet out fastest. Raidou was the more persistent, but Genma was sneakier. Time after time, Raidou would slap his hand on the bar (or floor, or table), only to find a dead leaf or napkin there, and Genma merrily counting out his own folding money at the register. 

"Exactly twelve-hundred ryu," he sing-songed, grinning. "Fortuitous." 

"You're making me look stingy!" Raidou barked, angrily scrubbing his hand clean. He'd be an old man, or long dead, before Genma ran out of ways to humiliate him: the last gyoza, placed ever so conveniently, would not be the worst by far. 

Genma sucked at his toothpick and pouted. "Oh ease up, your manhood's not gonna shrivel if you let me cover the check once in a while."

"Once in a while is one thing," Raidou grumbled. "But every day this week? I'm beginning to feel like--" 

What? What was this exactly? Were they dating? Would it be gauche to ask? Would it scare him away? He knew Genma put on a laid back front, but the guy was flighty as hell; didn't seem to like being pinned down. Didn't like confrontation or labels or anyone trying to define who or what he was. He made Jounin by grace of god and act of war, or otherwise he would've dithered on his career path until a sixth Hokage was inaugurated. Finding him in the same place and the same mood on more than one consecutive occasion was a rarity, a gift, Raidou thought. So how was he to handle this?

"I just need to know where I stand," he said as gently as possible. 

"About two feet back," said Genma. "Your breath's really kicking after that pork roll."

"Don't be cheeky, you know what I meant." 

"Fine," Genma snorted. "You owe me about seventy-five hundred since Monday, with an interest rate of one-point-eight percent. Because I'm soooo generous, I'm willing to let you defer payment until Friday. By then, though, you're treating me big-time. I expect wine, and meat, and that cake with the mousse filling. And maybe those jeans I was eyeing the other day."

"Oh, come--I'm not a bank, Genma. Keep saving those I.O.Us, you'll be liable to bankrupt me one day."

At this, he'd laughed. "You sound like my husband. So, you wanna make me your wife? Is that how it is? Ah~Rai-chan, you're so dependable! Tonight, I'll let you be on top for once."

Raidou groaned and covered his face, thankful the cafe was empty by then. "Why do I let this continue?"

"Because you're a sucker," said Genma. "And stingy as hell." He tossed Raidou an after dinner mint and beckoned with a small chin-jerk. "Can't get enough of me, either."

"Can't get away from you is more like it," he'd snorted, but both he and Genma knew he wouldn't have it any other way. 

The hissing and complaining were for show, for the sake of status quo, and Raidou's ego alone. Easier to play the grudging participant than admit he was beholden. A sucker born and bred. He'd cheated death several times over, was feared by his enemies and subordinates as a black-eyed death god with a soul eating sword, but when it came to Genma and his charms, Raidou was weak. 

For that, he loved him, resented him, and depended on him. His perfect equalizer, light to his dark. Though he'd be pained to admit it out loud. It was easier to focus on mundane trivialities like money, social face, and food. Who was eating what. Who'd been seen with whom. What were they putting in the hot-pots these days? What was the last thing he'd eaten before waking up with half his face missing? A flash-bomb or a castella cake, he was never quite sure, but Raidou knew he'd never look at either the same way again.

In the hospital, meals came like clockwork: rice porridge, millet toast, chicken broth and tea. Raidou lost nearly five kilos, and by the time Genma was allowed in to see him, he would've gladly kissed the man's feet for a bit of grilled eel and called it even.

The fact that he didn't, he owed to his own stubbornness; the one thing the enemy had not managed to blast out of him. 

"I owe you," he'd whispered, deliriously stroking Genma's hands, his hair, his shoulders. He was alive. He was here and alive, and Raidou was not kissing him on the battlefield as he lay dying. He was not laying fresh flowers on his grave, or stroking the cold glass of his picture-frame. 

Twelve dead. Twelve names, twelve portraits, twelve flowers laid on graves. Genma had seen and touched them all with mangled hands, had almost seen Raidou become thirteen. Was that fortuitous? He hardly thought so.

"Forget it," said Genma, bending stiffly to kiss the one bit of Raidou that was safe to touch: the top of his head. "We're square now."

Oh, but Raidou would not forget it, ever. There was not a drug in existence that could make him. He'd remind Genma every week as they recuperated: "I owe you."

"You must be joking."

"I owe you, Genma."

"I can't believe you're still on that. I told you--"

"I owe you a meal, at least."

He'd sigh and rap Raidou across the shin with his book, humoring him, but only just. "You don't owe me anything."

Among the ANBU and tokujo set, Raidou was known variously as a vengeful spirit, a mountain ogre, karasu-tengu: once he got his teeth or talons into something, he would not be shaken loose. Not with a pry bar, not by fire, not by death. He was cursed with stubbornness, with giri, and forever cursed to share it. He owed Genma his gratitude, and would blithely follow him through hell 'til he shut up and accepted it as such. If the only way to get through to him was with food? Then so be it.

"Come on, Genma, while it's still hot?"

"This isn't necessary," he'd say. He'd sit and he'd watch as Raidou removed the takeout from its packaging, or dished out bowls of Teuchi's best ramen; or presented a lovingly and painstakingly arranged bento, bowing as he did so.

"Hayate-kun made this, he says to enjoy it with all your vigor." 

"This just isn't necessary," Genma would repeat, and if not for the bandages, he would've shoved the bento right back in Raidou's face. "I told you we were square." 

Raidou even learned to cook for him. Having no sense of smell or taste made things challenging, but regardless, he launched himself into it as he would have any other mission: thoroughly and with purity of purpose; like a man demon-possessed. He followed the instructions to the letter, weighed and measured painstakingly, and gaged his poor, beleaguered guinea pig's reactions down to the minutest detail. The scrolls and recipe books soon overtook his small apartment, piled in regiments around the kitchen and on the floors and at the foot of his bed. Aoba said the OCD had finally gotten out of hand, he was going to have to stage an intervention.

"Just taste this," Raidou insisted, shoving a slice of jelly-roll cake across the table.

"Right, of course," Aoba sighed. "Like it's not perfect as always." 

When his own kitchen proved too small for his ambitions--which is to say, the land-lady forbid him to deep fry an entire duck--he bribed Teuchi-san handsomely for the use of Ichiraku's.

"Ah," Teuchi rumbled nervously. "What does a shinobi want with cooking? This bodes ill, it does."

Everything was fine, Raidou reassured the man, and promptly splashed hot cooking oil over his right arm. 

Genma threatened to kick his ass all the way to the clinic. "Dummy, now what've you gone and done?"

"It's nothing," Raidou muttered, by no means ready to back down over a trifling second degree burn. What was one more, besides?

Genma ticked at him, ever put-upon, ever humoring his latest flight of idiocy, and said: "You know, there are better ways to impress me, Rai-chan." 

It wasn't that, he'd wanted to say, but the cold flash of warning in Genma's eyes froze his tongue. One word, he realized, one more bloody word about giri or behest or indebtedness, and Genma would crack a chair over his thick skull. Of that, Raidou was certain.

"I--I--" he stammered, then sucked in a soft little hiss of air. He remembered he was a demon, a man possessed. Hesitation did not become him. "Is it such a crime," he said, "to want to do something nice for someone?"

With an exasperated snort, Genma shoved him, ever careful to avoid his still healing left shoulder, but hard enough to twist him sideways; enough to get his point across. "You can use my kitchen," he said. "Just so's I can keep an eye on you, understand?"

"I'll be more careful this time," Raidou promised. He knew he could never hope to make up for what was lost, not with gifts, not with food, not even through sheer doggedness, but what he could do was hold onto what remained.

"That's what you always say," Genma said mildly, which stung far worse than his anger. "Your promises are for shit."

"And so's your cooking," Raidou shot back. "You'd starve on your own without me, admit it."

"And you without me," Genma said, eyes once again warm.

Raidou kissed him on the forehead, a bold move akin to poking a live grenade, but he'd managed to wear down Genma's defenses, caught him completely off guard for the moment.

"Makes me lucky you're on my side, eh?" Genma said, later on, when he finally tasted the dish that'd caused all this trouble. "Seriously, though, you're trying to make me fat!"

His false cheer did little for Raidou's peace of mind. But he let that simmer away with the soup and dumplings, and he cooked until steam filled his kitchen--no more deep frying, he'd promised--until the heat had them cracking open windows to bathe their faces in cool drizzle. Raidou would lift the lid and rear back from the steam, face-shy, while Genma peaked fearlessly into the pot.

"Ah, just like mother used to make. Round, firm, hairy!"

"Insult my dumplings at your own peril." Raidou shooed him back with a ladle, carefully stirring while he tried not to laugh. "Go sit down, it'll be ready in a few minutes."

"Oi, that apron's kinda sexy."

"Sit."

"You'll make an ideal wife, Raidou."

"Want me to leave?"

"Yeah, yeah." He'd knelt at the table with elaborate care, eyes studiously on his bowl, hands rested stiffly in his lap, and waited with thinly veiled dread for Raidou to serve him.

"Shall we, then?" Raidou said briskly.

They each lifted their spoons at once, with military precision, and began eating: Genma clumsy and stiff armed, grimly determined to get things over with; and if Raidou said one damn word, even asked if he was okay, he'd unleash righteous hell over it.

So, when the spoon slipped from his fingers and rang sharply off the edge of the bowl, Raidou wisely said nothing; just sat back and braced for the explosion. Three, two, one. Genma drew in a sharp hiss, glared hard at the offending object, then casually flipped it up by the handle and into the wall where it lodged, faintly vibrating, centimeters from Raidou's ear. 

Raidou frowned at Genma's bowl, then at the spoon handle, then at his angrily flushed face. "Impressive, but you left a dumpling."

Genma frowned delicately. "I'm full."

"Full? You're usually on your third bowl about now."

Genma's eyes snapped up, steely. "My stomach shrank."

"Since yesterday?"

"I'm going on a diet," Genma sniffed. "I'm not a teenager anymore, y'know."

Raidou firmed his mouth. Really, this was getting ridiculous. "A dumpling won't kill you."

"It's all right, why don't you eat it?"

"Considerate of you, but there's plenty more for both of us." Raidou scooped up the dumpling and stuck it under Genma's nose. "I'm afraid I'll be very insulted if you don't finish. And we don't want that now, do we?"

Genma pulled in a sharp little 'tch and folded his arms. Which hurt more than he, perhaps, meant to let on. "Why's everything have to be a battle of wills with you?" He'd groaned. "A warrior must prevail at all cost, whether cooking dumplings or scrubbing the toilets! I swear--"

"What can I say?" Raidou lowered the dumpling a bit, not quite drawing back. "You bring out my better qualities." 

Genma slouched down, fuming, making it abundantly clear what he thought of Raidou's 'better qualities'.

Raidou lifted his hand again. He wasn't about to force things, but nor was he about to give up pestering. "Is it such a crime?" He challenged. "Your manhood's not going to shrivel if you let me do for you once in a while."

Sourly, Genma opened his mouth and accepted the last dumpling, muttering as he chewed. "It's not that."

"What then?" Raidou pressed.

"You're always doing for me," he said quietly. "I thought I told you we were square."

The laugh slipped out unbidden, a harsh cough that tugged at the tight skin of his neck and came out all the more bitter for it. "How old are we, Genma?" He lowered his spoon with a dull 'clock' onto the table. "This isn't a game, and nobody's keeping score."

"It's not that," he said again, stubborn to the last. "You know, people are starting to talk about us."

"Let them," Raidou said crisply. "If I gave two shits what people thought of me, I'd have married years ago just to keep up appearances."

Genma's turn to laugh, musical and incredulous. "Oi, just when you think you know a person!"

Raidou set his jaw and reached for the ladle, resolutely filling both their bowls again. He knew this wasn't about people talking. It wasn't about who was keeping score. It wasn't even about Genma's figure, which was the same pleasing shape as ever.

"I don't deserve you," Genma sighed, wiping away imaginary tears.

"No," Raidou said gruffly, yanking Genma's spoon from the wall behind, then setting it firmly on the table. "But you're stuck with me."

~fin?~

**Author's Note:**

> Part of an older, unfinished WIP.


End file.
